


the Art of Dying

by ChatterBoxomie



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6956608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChatterBoxomie/pseuds/ChatterBoxomie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly should know better than to waste another second on just another body in the morgue. Especially a body she knows belongs to a liar. But she can't seem to help herself. Sometimes we like to pretend we can convince ourselves a lie is a "truth" just because the awful truth is way worse than the illusion we ourselves know to be fragile and false as wine. This is the art of dying while we still breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just Another Body

“And maybe that was love. Being so vulnerable and allowing someone else in so far they could hurt you, but they also give you everything.”

\- Christine Feehan, _Water Bound_

Eyes burning with angry tears, she tried hard to ignore the other burning - the one in her chest - and to just focus on sitting down and enjoying the TV. No matter how high she raised the volume, no matter how blazing loud it was, she couldn't seem to shake the memories of having those arms, lithe and reassuring, wrapped around her shoulders.

Couldn't seem to shake the feel of his fingers ghosting across her forehead, running through her hair absently; the way his smile looked in the light of the flashing images across her telly, such a strange and mysterious smile. One that didn't look so innocent when he thought she wasn't looking.

When he thought no one was looking, Jim didn't look very kind.

Once, she'd come back from the bathroom to find his expression twisted into one of disgust as he scolded Toby and brushed the fur off his clothes, and another time, he'd been smiling in a way that the warmth didn't reach his eyes.

She didn't know when she'd began to notice that Jim wasn't who he said he was. She didn't remember when she'd stopped trusting anything he said, when she started looking over her shoulder at work, hoping he wouldn't come through the door. She didn't even know when she began finding herself begging silently for someone to save her from lying to his face, hoping he wouldn't be able to read through her lies, though she knew he could, that she wasn't very good at hiding the truth from him.

When had everything gone wrong? When had she started to spot his sarcasm and his lies, the fact that his smile was too sweet? When had she begun to fear that very same smile she once adored?

When did she start feeling trapped in his company? Alone even when his arms were wrapped around her? Scared even when he whispered, "Everything will be okay?"

All that made sense, when she really thought about the fact that Sherlock might be right. That Jim might actually have been... lying about something serious to her. That he might have been hiding a monster from her.

That he might have been a devil in disguise behind a sweet smile and even sweeter laughter. After a while, though, the relief washed away to be replaced by a new kind of loneliness. Molly started to miss Jim, and that's when she realized something inside of her had been broken long ago, long before she met Sherlock and long before Jim reeled her in with his promises of coffee in the morning.

It might have started when Jim commented on her blog, or when Sherlock had noticed her lipstick, but Molly would only be lying to herself if she said that something hadn't been wrong with her before all that.

Maybe it'd started with the day she realized that she liked to look at dead bodies. When she realized that she couldn't cope with the living, that she admired the way bodies could tell whole stories just at a single glance.

Maybe it'd started with the day she'd made that first incision, in college, and realized that she wasn't afraid to go further, to see more, and that, in fact, she wanted to. So desperately.

No matter how much Molly thought about it, she realized that maybe Jim had just been a little push to that realization. That she herself was messed up, too. That every angel had its dark feather.

And in the end, she missed him. She realized she was still hung up on every little word he'd said, that it hadn't been Sherlock who she'd obsessed over, but Jim. God, Molly was obsessed with a possible psychopath with the most appealing smile and the softest kiss.

_He lied to you, Molls._

She jumped about a foot in the air. No one was there. No one. She was alone in her apartment. Telling herself this didn't make her feel better, though. Where had that voice come from? Had it been hidden away in her mind, waiting for the perfect opportunity to jump out? To make her admit she might be a little crazy, herself?

Why did she have to keep thinking about him!?

The question frustrated her because Molly already knew the answer. She was addicted to the thought of him, to the doubt that maybe, just maybe, she might have been able to save him. He'd tried calling her. She'd ignored his call, angry at him for lying.

So stupid. What a childish thing to be angry about. She lied to him all the time. Didn't mean he believed her, or that he didn't know the truth, but she still tried. So why couldn't Molly just have picked up the phone?

_Because you thought it might make things worse. You thought you might never be able to escape the memory of me, the possibility of ruining your own life, if you picked up that phone._

God, but he'd screwed her over so badly, so many times. He'd left her barely hinged, hanging on to his every last word, trying to see the double innuendo behind every innocent word he ever told her. He'd left her broken and miserable, unable to trust anyone, unable to even feel happy when Sherlock had told her that she'd "always counted."

Sherlock was only using her past feelings to manipulate her. She knew this, without having to ask or look deeper into things. It didn't mean it didn't hurt that he still did it. She understood why he did it. If someone like John had walked into her life and made everything better, she might have done the same, albeit less successfully.

But it didn't mean things hurt less when she realized everyone in her life had always manipulated her weaknesses to get what they wanted out of her. It hurt, a lot. It hurt even worse to realize that Jim had done the same, though he'd always promised he would never lie to her. That he would never use her.

That he really did love her. Nobody had ever told her they loved her before. Molly had felt so happy, so perfect, so flawless and beautiful, when he'd said it, when he'd looked at her in a way that made her feel like she didn't NEED Sherlock to feel complete.

But that'd probably been a lie. No, it WAS a lie. There was no reason for her to keep lying to herself about it. It had been a lie. The memory of him, of Jim, didn't even bother to deny this. Just kept its silence, its peace.

It hurt.

And it pissed her off.

Why did everyone think she was so easy, so unimportant, to take advantage of? Who did Sherlock think he was!? He may have been the smartest person she'd ever met, the best violin player and best detective, but he wasn't anything in the real world! Why did she keep letting herself be pushed around by him? By anyone?

She made good money, she had a steady job doing what she liked to do [ignoring her strange obsession with the dead - it wasn't important], and she was PRETTY. Molly knew it. She didn't have to go around making herself feel better with lipstick. She didn't have to hope he would notice when she changed her hairstyle or when she wore a new brand of blush or anything stupidly pointless like that.

She had no reason to give a shit about what he thought.

And who did Jim think he was, too!? He could be a psychopath all he wanted, the greatest consulting criminal that ever was, but he was nothing to Molly. Nothing but Jim from IT. No one worth bothering herself about.

He'd told her countless times he was happy being with her, so happy "he could die", and she'd told herself he was "right" for her. And everything should have been good from there. But no. It would be downright ridiculous to think that Molly Hooper could ever have a happy ending.

She knew she would never have one. She shouldn't have been so disappointed, she shouldn't have felt so lost. She shouldn't be so addicted to that brand of sadness: self-pity, that was. Nostalgia. Missing Jim was unhealthily upsetting.

She didn't even need his love, anyway! Did he even recognize what that was? Love?

Did any of those two idiots know what it was?

Her sob choked in her throat, and Molly felt the angry tears running down her cheeks. God, Jim had really screwed her over. He'd really done it, this time. It was worse than that time he pretended to get lost in the streets just to see if she would care.

She'd been so angry that time, so upset, and he'd only laughed, though she'd hit him so hard he'd looked surprised, for just a split second, and she'd seen something crack on his facade, seen something like warmth in that cold act of his.

And that had been the only time he'd kissed her. She had just been yelling at him for doing that to her, for worrying her, and she'd been telling him to never talk to her again, to "just leave and go home", until he'd suddenly grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close, into a kiss she hadn't seen coming.

She hadn't realized what was happening until a second had passed and she'd realized she wasn't yelling, anymore. After that, he never kissed her again, but she kept remembering that day, and always blushed like an idiot whenever he got within five feet of her. He probably enjoyed being able to fluster her so easily; she could tell by that little smile he always had whenever she avoided getting too close.

And though she knew she should let everything go, that she should forget Jim, damn him to Hell and move on, cut her losses and admit she'd screwed up by trusting him and almost even loving him, she couldn't.

She couldn't, and goddamnit, she just missed him, and it hurt, and everything looked so blurry right now through the tears that she only started to cry more when she realized she was crying over her messed-up feelings for the criminal mastermind.

The tears became worse when she remembered what Sherlock had told her. That he was dead. That he'd killed himself for the sake of "the game". What _game_? God, he'd always been so crazy, she thought with a bitter smile.

Even though Sherlock had told her he was gay, that he was into men, that was so long ago, and she couldn't even seem to accept it as truth, because in the end, they'd all been wrong, hadn't they? Jim wasn't what anyone thought he was.

"Jim from IT" didn't exist. He never had. He'd just been a weirdo freak's mask to get close to his archenemy, a way to get close without getting burned. So why the Hell did he even waste his time with her?

Molly still didn't understand. He could have just found some other way to get to Sherlock. He was resourceful, from what the consulting detective had told her. So why had he needed her so much? Or had he just been bored, wasting away time with her?

That thought burned too much, so she pushed it away. Acknowledged it might be true, and tried to move on. Couldn't, and began to cry worse. The idiot hadn't done anything to Sherlock, hadn't affected him in any way. Everyone Sherlock cared about had lived.

Sherlock was okay. Still alive. Playing violin at five in the morning, annoying the life out of her before he moved back in with John, and still very much alive.

No. Sherlock once remarked to Molly, after she'd asked, that Jim had threatened to "burn the heart" out of him. What "Jim from IT" didn't realize was that he only burned the heart out of Molly Hooper when he pulled that trigger.

When he lied to her and kissed her that day, when he laughed and smiled and watched Glee with her on her couch, when he touched Toby and scowled at him when Molly "wasn't looking", when he left all those cute messages, just when he breathed in her general direction...

Jim had burned the heart out of Molly.

And now, he was just somebody that Molly used to know.

Just another body in the morgue.


	2. the Awful Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

"Too late for changes, too late perhaps for explanations and ideological webs, but the love goes on, the love goes on, blind to laws and warnings and even to wisdom and to fears. And whatever that love is, perhaps an illusion of a new love, I want it, I can't resist it, my whole being melts in one kiss, my knowledge melts, my fears melt, my blood dances, my legs open."

\- Anais Nin

Another body. Just another body. That's what he should have been. But he wasn't. Who was she kidding, anyway? Who was she trying to lie to, besides herself? Jim from IT could never be "just another body".

She wondered if anyone knew. She wondered if she'd been assigned to perform an autopsy on him for the purpose of teaching her to be careful. Sometimes, her supervisors could be so horrible to her.

No, they wouldn't know, she reminded herself gently. Nobody but Sherlock and John knew. Nobody but them, and they had no power in the morgue. None at all. She was the only one who let Sherlock in, after all.

Everyone else shut them out with disapproving eyes. Everyone else ignored their existence, bustling around, always busy, always working, always earning their keep and brushing away each body with no after-thought.

Nobody else in the morgue had ever been anything like her. Molly was  different from everyone else, however much she tried to tell herself otherwise. No one else could trust Sherlock like she had. Only Molly had been close enough to meet Jim. To entangle herself with a criminal mastermind just because she was so involved with the consulting detective.

No one else was that stupid.

Only Molly Hooper pulled such stupid stunts. Only she tripped and crashed her whole life like that. Only she could feel any sort of connection to the bodies assigned to her, enough to empathize with their pain, enough to feel sympathy for their story, enough to tell them apart.

Enough to talk to them while she performed her autopsies.

That was Molly's little secret. The one thing she refused to tell anyone, the one thing she got so good at hiding that even Sherlock couldn't read it out of her expression and body language.

She had whole one-sided conversations with her patients. Would be looking into their eyes with a flashlight while she commented brightly on their hair. Would be making incisions into their chest while she complimented their muscle structure.

Would talk about her cat while she studied their ribcage, took note of each pre-death blow, and would even sometimes mention Sherlock while she placed each organ on a tray.

She usually left her lab feeling like she'd made a new friend or two each day. This was probably why she often attended their funerals and visited their graves. Why she felt like she lost someone, too, whenever she was forced to face the fact that they would never talk back.

Which was why today was such a shock for her.

This time, she already knew the body. It made everything ten times harder.

His face, oddly filled with life and warmth, was very still. His eyes closed. She didn't bother remarking on the fact that he seemed to be breathing very softly. Slowly. It was all in her imagination, she told herself.

And accepted this.

So why did she start speaking to him?

She'd promised herself she wouldn't talk to any body she knew before their death, because things would only get bad and weird. So why was she breaking that rule, just for him? Just for Liar Jim? Just for the man who tried to kill people she cared about? Why was he making her flip her lid so much?

She tried to hate him, before this. She really tried to convince herself it'd be best to hate his guts and forget about the warmth in her chest when he'd kissed her that day, the silly smile she'd often felt on her face whenever he called out to her from the cafe doorway, waving sheepishly and then tucking his hands into his jean pockets.

She tried to forget all this niceness. These pleasant memories. But somehow, they only mixed in with the bad ones to make her realize that, unhealthily and scarily enough, she was in love with a monster, with the _idea_ of Jim from IT.

She found herself wistfully thinking that it would have been nice if the illusion hadn't ended, if the illusion had actually been reality. If Jim from IT had actually wound up being Richard Brooke. Because then, she would have at least had a chance to actually love him. If he would have been as timid and frightened as Sherlock had said he'd acted as.

But God, what was Jim really like, then? She supposed she would never find out, which should be a good thing, right? At least he could die nicely in her mind, still just as Jim from IT, not as whatever he must have appeared as to Sherlock.

She pitied everyone else who saw the real thing. She would have hated to have such an illusion shattered in such a way, to see the real monster lurking beneath. All she had now was the hint of something terrible beneath that warm smile she so remembered and cherished.

Molly pulled her gloves on absently, breath hitching only momentarily when she thought she saw his mouth twitch. That was impossible, though. He was dead. I mean, _really_ dead. Sherlock had watched him put the gun in his mouth.

_But he backed away too quickly to realize if Jim had actually pulled the trigger._

Shaking her head of such thoughts, she gazed at the body for just another hesitating second. "You know," she found herself saying before she could stop herself, as she often did with other bodies [but not with people she'd known previously, she scolded herself], "it's odd. I could swear to anyone who'd listen that you don't look any more dead than you did when you were still... You know."

Another second passed, maybe a whole minute, and then she sighed. Pulled a cart away from the open door and let the door fall closed. Listened to the lock click into place. "You probably don't even really remember my name, huh?"

She laughed, surprised to find that the laugh wasn't cheerful. Wasn't lively, at all. That it sounded bitter. Sad. Angry.

"Don't remember anything, actually," she continued, "about me. But that's okay. You know, I think I really should get used to that. To not being remembered. To being easily forgotten, pushed aside, treated like the bodies in this morgue. Like dead weight."

The silence was unnerving because Molly could swear she heard him actually breathing. Almost like he was listening to her. Like he was still alive. Actually _breathing._

Shaking the creeping suspicion away, she searched through the bin on the top of the cart, suddenly finding herself trying to keep her hands busy for fear that she would suddenly take one of the scalpels on the table and stab him where his heart would be, if he'd really been human. "I've heard stories about you, you know? People do a lot of talking, sometimes." She laughed, just as half-heartedly as before.

"They all said you lied to me. That you were, you know, a liar. That you lied for a living. Manipulated, cheated, killed for a living. That you helped other people do it, too. That you were... that you were a psychopath, a monster."

Another long, unnerving silence. She could swear she heard him laughing in the back of her mind. The laugh was like it usually was: bright, cheery. But for once, she heard the menace behind it. The threat that had _always_ been there, clear for anyone who looked deep enough to see it.

Was he laughing at her? No, stupid Molly, he's dead, she reminded herself angrily. Wiped her tear just as angrily with a gloved hand. It hurt, the rough texture against her skin. She almost didn't feel it. It didn't hurt as much as the pain in her chest. She'd wanted to confront him, to yell at him and hit him and hurt him, but how could she? How could she do that when he was dead?

When he'd hurt himself, instead?

She sniffled, a loud noise in the empty silence of her lab.

"I could tear you apart."

That statement hung in the air, as she mulled it over and decided it sounded fine. She turned around and faced his dead body. Saw his still face and remembered the way he would smile and try to detach Toby's claws from his clothes.

The way she would laugh as she watched.

The way he would smile back and tell her, jokingly, that she was being mean.

The air grew still as she contemplated her next words.

"I could rip you to shreds. I could tear you open and keep tearing until I was crying too much to see anything. Say it was an accident, and they would believe me. They would think I was stricken with grief."

She paused, thought about it, decided that maybe if they assumed that, it wouldn't be a lie. She _was_ stricken with grief, she supposed.

"They would look at me and say, 'It's okay, Molly,' and they would try to hide their pity. But I wouldn't get in trouble," she continued. He didn't say anything, didn't argue. Of course. He was dead. What _could_ he do or say?

Nothing.

Her laugh was bitter.

"But you know what? It wouldn't make me feel even a bit better. It wouldn't change a damned thing because you still fucking killed me when you pulled that trigger."

This time, her voice was almost a whisper. Her swearing wasn't so much of a surprise as the fact that she'd actually admitted it aloud, to him. To his body, to be exact, but still to him. To his face.

And she wasn't afraid, and she didn't regret saying it.

Because it was the most honest she'd been to herself, to anyone else, in a while.

It didn't matter, anyway. He was dead. The dead didn't spill any secrets. Her confession would be taken to his grave, and no one would ever know. Not even Sherlock could ever realize just how Jim from IT had twisted Molly's sentiments until she barely recognized them as 'okay', herself.

Nothing would ever be okay, again, as long as he didn't open his goddamned eyes.

"You wanted to burn Sherlock's heart out of him, you moron? I hope you feel a lot better knowing you _destroyed_ mine," she told the body with an air of finality. She didn't feel like any more tears were falling. They had just simply stopped.

It felt oddly cold to have admitted that, almost like she was being unfair with him. But what did he care, anyway? If there was even a sliver of chance that he survived, would he even give a shit that she'd be happy he had?

 _No_ , was the cold truth. _He wouldn't_.

Molly looked down to make sure her gloves were in place. Her fingers felt very numb, and she didn't want to wind up spilling a lot of blood, _his blood_ , on her fingers. If he still had any left.

She saw his fingers twitch.

 _I am going to need so much therapy when this is over_.

But when Molly looked up, she wasn't met with the sight of a cold, dead body.

She wound up looking right into those dark eyes of his. And he blinked.

 

It took Molly a second to realize that, "Hey, a dead body is blinking at you. Hm... That's funny. The dead can't actually do that. They shouldn't be able to do that."

Then, she found herself moving back so fast, it was incredible that he managed to stop her before she was running out the door and to the bathroom to lose her lunch. And breakfast.

She'd been right in front of the door when she suddenly found herself pressed up against the wall, immobilized, unable to move a finger. Her hand, the one holding the scalpel, was held tightly, painfully, in a powerful grip.

In HIS powerful grip. Jim was alive, she realized after a second of agonizing over the pain in her wrist. She was starting to lose feeling in that hand. Molly finally found the strength and voice to say, "Let go."

His eyes were dark, unreadable, and she finally realized, with a sharp jolt in her reality, a tearing in her fabric of truth, that he was showing her who he really was. He had finally shed the costume in front of her, and was letting her see the man everyone else only whispered about when they thought she couldn't hear them.

Jim from IT was showing her Moriarty.

His body was uncomfortably close to hers, pressing her up against the wall in a way that would only be seen as seductive to anyone who wasn't her, who was looking in from a safe distance. It was anything but romantic to her.

It was the scariest thing she'd ever experienced.

And the only weapon she had was in the hand she couldn't feel or move.

Molly felt shock course through her. Had she actually just thought about hurting someone? About really, really hurting someone? She'd thought about cutting a living person? What was Jim doing to her? Why was he doing this to her?

She'd never done anything to deserve this. She'd been a good girl all her life, studied for tests and done her homework, gotten straight A's, flown through college and spared her parents heartaches, never looked twice at a boy until she met Sherlock and then Jim.

His eyes didn't look angry, despite his death grip on her left hand.

That was the funny thing. However much Sherlock said he knew about her, he'd never realized that Molly Hooper was left-handed. He always thought she was the opposite.

Only because he'd never watched her work.

Despite the situation, Jim's eyes only were all the more unreadable. But not angry. She could just tell when people were angry, and he wasn't mad at her. But why would he be, anyway? She hadn't done anything.

Not yet.

"Is it true?"

She blinked, didn't answer right away. She was too dizzy, suddenly, her mind whirling in and out, only faintly realizing he hadn't died when he should have. Either that, or Sherlock had lied. Which she didn't doubt he would do.

But it just didn't seem as if Sherlock had known, either.

Then again, what did _she_ know? Silly little Molly Hooper, the mouse scurrying in the lab? What did mice know about the human world? About the people walking through their lives?

Nothing, she thought dully.

His gaze was no longer soft. Now, it was angry. _Now_ he was angry.

"Answer me, Molly."

He let go of her wrist, switched to trapping her against the wall by placing both hands on either side of her head. He wasn't worried about her scalpel. She'd dropped it when he'd squeezed her wrist only seconds ago.

It fell to the floor with a loud, startling clatter.

She jumped, startled, and his smile was not unkind.

"Is what true?"

She didn't dare to call him Jim. Didn't want to taint that image, that memory of false imperfect perfection, with a new memory, one of a cruel smile. If she did, she might just really start to cry again. And she might not be able to stop this time.

"Did I _destroy_ you by pulling that trigger?"

He was being cruel, mean, she realized.

Molly lowered her eyes. And felt stupid. Bodies were supposed to have been stripped naked, she found herself thinking blankly. If she had just bothered to lift the blue sheets, she would have seen that he couldn't really be dead.

He wasn't naked. Instead, he was clothed in the finest of tailored suits. Clothed in leather and silk. Masked with the scent of the wealthy. Something strong but endurable. Something that seemed to become addictive to Molly with just a simple whiff.

He was even wearing shoes, for crying out loud.

She didn't want to answer his question. It wouldn't work out in her favor. No way it could. His eyes were poking at her, prodding her to say what he wanted to hear. But what _did_ he want to hear?

That he'd twisted her around his little finger so badly that she _missed_ his manipulation? She wouldn't give him that satisfaction. He'd have to kill her, first.

He stooped, picked up the scalpel, but didn't let her move. He didn't have to enforce the situation, though. She wouldn't have been able to move on her own, anyway. Didn't trust her legs not to crumple under the realization that she'd been confessing her feelings, close to saying the one thing she'd always hidden, to a living body.

Even when he pressed the scalpel to her cheek, she didn't feel afraid. She knew she should, but she didn't. Molly actually only felt a strange, sickening relief. She was happy that he wasn't dead. When she realized this, she let out a choked sob, and realized she was crying while she also felt the strongest urge to laugh.

Was this shock? Was she undergoing shock?

Was Molly in shock? Or had she just realized how fucked up she really was?

"Don't make me say it," she told him, finally, and he looked into her face. Held the blade there for just a second later, before he suddenly beckoned to her hand.

"What?"

"Give me," he started to yell, and she flinched; he seemed to think better of it, and his voice lowered, became softer, "your hand."

He wasn't smiling, oddly enough. She'd heard enough times from Sherlock that he had an awful habit of smiling when everything was going according to how he liked it. And he had her trapped, had her good and scared and crazy, so why wasn't he smiling?

She held out her hand. It was shaking.

 _His_ hand wasn't, when he opened her hand, spreading the fingers out. The cool of the metal was what pulled her from her confused haze. Looking down, Molly realized that he'd given her the scalpel.

"Molly," he said softly. She didn't respond.

His patience wore thin. "Molly, goddamnit! Molly, answer me!"

His eyes were burning into hers, and though he took her by the shoulders and shook her so hard her head banged into the wall behind her, she didn't open her mouth. Just stared into his face, wishing she would just wake up already. Or realize she'd been halucinating all this time.

No such luck.

She looked down at her hand, and saw him closing her fingers, almost gently, over the scalpel's handle. She watched the man lean down, kiss her fingers, one by one, slowly. She blinked. When she looked back into his face, she was shocked to see that he was smiling so coldly. Such a cold look on that face she once loved.

"Do you have any idea how naive and stupid you really are? You don't know what the real world is like. You live in your little world of happiness and acceptance and you're such an _angel_. You're supposed to be boring. Your feathers are so white they blind me. You're so disgustingly predictable."

She felt something like pain stab in her heart. Or maybe she was just having a heart attack. It wouldn't surprise her. Her body might be reacting late to the fact that she was talking to a man who should be dead. The shock could have delayed this reaction.

"And yet, you're a mystery to me." She blinked.

"I never could tell what you were thinking, you know, if that makes you feel any better." He looked up, into her eyes, and Molly thought that, for a second, she could see Jim from IT. Or maybe that was Richard Brooke. She wasn't sure if he was just playing games with her. He probably was.

Molly figured she might never really know.

"So, it's only _fair_ if you tell me."

He was talking about the 'destroying her heart' thing, again.

God, that was going to get tiring; she could already tell.

"Tell you what!? That even though you should make me sick with hatred, you make me sick with nostalgia and self-pity, instead?! " She shouldn't have yelled. Now someone might start wondering what was happening.

His eyes were still as dark as ever, but this time, she could see a hint of the brown inside them. Of the human inside the monster. Of the truth inside the lie. She felt his hand on her shoulder, but he changed his mind. Instead, his thumb stroked her bottom lip. She quivered beneath his touch, and she felt him leaning closer to her.

Close enough to kiss her. Or spit on her. Neither of which would be a surprise, considering his reputation. Suddenly, she could read his intentions clearly in his eyes. Because his expression hadn't changed even a bit.

And suddenly, it was like that day, so long ago, in the streets. When she'd felt so frustrated and scared because she couldn't find Jim. When she'd found him stroking under the chin of a labrador retriever. When she'd started to yell and cry and hit him and call him rude names.

It was like that day, when his eyes had suddenly flashed, and she'd suddenly realized just how hungry for closeness, for _her_ , he was. And then he'd grabbed her and pulled her into the strangest, softest, most powerful, mind-blowing kiss she'd ever experienced. Not that she'd ever really kissed anyone before.

The only other time she had was in college, just to experiment.

This time, when the hunger returned, he had her alone, with no one to remind him to be a gentleman around. And his kiss was just as powerful, just as captivating, as the last one. And like the last time, her knees buckled underneath her, and she lost her balance. Only this time, he didn't laugh and pull her up with an apology.

This time, he sunk with her to the cold floor, and his grip on her elbow loosened, only for him to grip the back of her head, to keep her in place. She needed to breathe, could feel her air starting to leave her lungs, but strangely enough, she didn't want him to move away. She felt like the illusion might break, like he might disappear, back onto the table, if he broke away.

Her fingers seemed to find their way up remarkably well, for all the fact that she couldn't see what she was doing, and they tangled into his once-neat hair. He didn't mind, for maybe just this once. He didn't even seem to care that his clothes were becoming ruffled up in this heated moment of... _whatever_ this was.

And suddenly, he was pulling back, letting her swallow as much air as she could in gasps and heaves. He didn't even seem fazed. His expression was one of careful control. Though the fire in his eyes suggested otherwise, said the truth: she'd broken through his composure.

With just her words.

She realized she still held the scalpel, and let it go. She realized all at once what he'd given it to her for. He'd been giving her the choice: kill him or let him live. For what he'd done _to her_ , not to Sherlock.

He'd shown her a great mercy by giving her the choice to end the greatest criminal mastermind the world had ever seen. But she wasn't going to do what he wanted. She wasn't going to stoop that low.

She could never force her own hand. She could never kill him.

Molly would never be the one to end Jim.

Not her Jim, not Jim from IT. Because that kindness was still what stopped her from doing it. The memory of his withdrawn smile, of his kind and hesitant words.

His lips were suddenly on hers again, but before she could react, he was pulling back, and burying his face into her neck, inhaling her scent, closing his eyes and just offering to let her hold him. So she did.

Molly forced her shaking body to follow her desperate need, and she wrapped trembling arms around his waist. He wrapped his own around her body, in return, and stayed still, not quite on his knees, but low enough to worry Molly about dirtying his clothes.

"Do you hate me, Molly?"

His question took her by surprise. He was so quiet. He sounded like the old Jim she knew. "No." Her voice was hoarse, sounded tired.

She did feel tired. Tired and worn-down.

"No, you sick, stupid creep."

She felt his grip tighten, a warning.

But she had to finish what she'd wanted to say for so long.

Needed to.

"I love you."

He stiffened. Grew silent, still. Almost like he hadn't expected her to say that. Of course he didn't. Any normal person, any ordinary angel, wouldn't say it. Wouldn't dare admit that out loud. Would agonize over it silently. But never admit it to the devil's face. Because what he had done was wrong. Because he was wrong.

Because everything about him was wrong and dirty and impure.

And perfectly imperfect.

Sherlock was perfect. Jim was horrifying, wrong in so many ways for Molly, but now, Molly realized she didn't want perfect. She didn't want Sherlock. She wanted everything Jim had to offer, everything he had ever done wrong. She wanted someone who was so far from perfect that they could only be perfect for a _screw-up_ like her.

"I shouldn't," she admitted, her voice almost a whisper, something broken in it that she'd never heard before from herself, "You're sick inside, Jim."

He didn't argue against her accusation. Knew it was true, accepted it.

"Sick." She repeated, sounding to herself like a broken record. "But I love you."

And Molly started to cry. Because there was something so horribly wrong with her, but she couldn't name it. Stockholm Syndrome? No, that wasn't it. It wasn't as if he was holding her captive, had taken her prisoner.

In a way, he had. But physically, he hadn't.

And she felt him tighten his grip, almost like he was trying to protect her, but didn't know what to protect her from. Himself? No, he would have to leave her, then. And he just couldn't push himself to, not after what she'd just told him.

Even he wasn't so insensitive. He'd broken her, and now, he knew it.

He'd torn her. He'd destroyed her, after all. Instead of burning the heart out of Sherlock, he'd burned the heart out of Molly Hooper. And he'd done it without meaning to, just in passing by.

And felt something like regret. Was that regret?

He didn't know. After so many years where he'd ignored the guilt and regret until it faded into disinterest and cold amusement, he wasn't sure what this feeling, this pricking of awful sadness and self-hatred, was.

"I know." He didn't know if it would make her feel any better, or if he was trying to make _himself_ feel better about what he'd done, but he did know, now, that her feeling wasn't one-sided.

He would never let Sherlock make her feel unloved again. Because even if it was only him, only the monster, only the consulting criminal with a cold smile and his finger on every key to every door, James Moriarty did love Molly Hooper.

And he didn't feel stupid, not at all, admitting it to himself.

"And for what it's worth..."

He paused. Was he really going to say it aloud. Could he?

"Say it," she told him, daring him to do it. Daring him to admit that he had a heart, too, that he had a weakness, too. To admit that he was human.

"But only if you mean it. Only if."

Well, in that case, he had no choice.

"I love you, Molly."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last part of this creepy little project.
> 
> I can't remember why I wrote this thing in the first place, but I'm just glad I actually went through with it.
> 
> Motivation for writing doesn't come easy. (Says the girl who always blames everything else for her laziness. lol.)
> 
> I don't know if this counts as a "happy ending". I'm sorry if it doesn't, but hey, life sucks, sometimes. Especially for nobody-pathologists working in dreary little morgues.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the first project I've ever worked on, but it was completed a very long time ago, maybe a few years, now, and published on my Fanfiction.net account, as well. I've decided that this would be a good testing ground for feedback on my writing process, although it's a bit outdated on the style and process that I now have.  
> Anyways, it's meant to be enjoyed, although it's a little creepy. lol.


End file.
